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Driverless Taxis Blocked Ambulance in Fatal Accident, San Francisco Fire Dept. Says

Two Cruise taxis delayed an ambulance carrying a car accident victim to a hospital, a department report said. The company said it was not at fault.

By Yiwen Lu

Two Cruise driverless taxis blocked an ambulance carrying a critically injured patient who later died at a hospital, a San Francisco Fire Department report said, in another incident involving self-driving cars in the city.

On Aug. 14, two Cruise autonomous vehicles were stopped in the right two lanes of a four-lane, one-way street in the SoMa neighborhood, where the victim was found, according to the department report. It said that a police vehicle in another lane had to be moved in order for the ambulance to leave.

The driverless vehicles delayed transport and medical care, the report said. The patient, who had been struck by a car, was pronounced dead about 20 to 30 minutes after arriving at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, about 2.4 miles away from the accident.

Cruise, an autonomous vehicle subsidiary of General Motors, said that it was not at fault. The footage Cruise shared with The New York Times appeared to show that one of its vehicles had moved from the scene before the victim was loaded to the ambulance, while the other stopped in the right lane until after the ambulance left. The footage also showed that other vehicles, including another ambulance, passed by the right side of the Cruise taxi.

“As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded” by the Cruise vehicle, the company said in a statement. The ambulance passed the stopped Cruise vehicle approximately 90 seconds after loading the victim, according to the footage.

Cruise said that a police officer spoke to one of its employees through remote assistance in the vehicle, and that the company was able to navigate it away from the scene after the ambulance left.

The Fire Department confirmed the report , which was first obtained by Forbes. Jeanine Nicholson, chief of the Fire Department, said that “seconds matter” in such incidents and the problem was that responders were not able to access to the patient.

“I have yet to see Cruise taking responsibility for anything,” Ms. Nicholson said, adding that more conversations need to happen.

Aaron Peskin, the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said that regardless of what led to the victim’s death, the “accumulative total” of incidents involving driverless cars was more alarming. “All of them have a common theme, which is autonomous vehicles are not ready for prime time,” Mr. Peskin said.

Cruise and Waymo, which is backed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, began to offer driverless taxi services in San Francisco last year. The accident occurred four days after both companies obtained a permit from California state regulators to expand their services to charge for rides at all hours in San Francisco.

The Fire Department said the case was one of more than 70 of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency responders. San Francisco officials have protested the expansion of driverless taxi services since January, pointing to cases where driverless cars blocked emergency vehicles and interfered during active firefighting and crime scenes.

Some city officials have said that these incidents are a small fraction of all cases involving driverless cars. The companies were required to report only collisions to regulators, not other incidents.

Since the expansion of driverless taxi services began, Cruise vehicles were reported to have blocked traffic and to have been stuck in wet cement. On Aug. 17, a Cruise vehicle collided with a fire truck. The next day, the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the safety of autonomous vehicles, asked Cruise to halve the number of vehicles it was operating in the city as it investigated the incidents.

City officials plan to file a motion for a new hearing on the service expansion, Mr. Peskin said. David Chiu, the city attorney, previously asked the California Public Utilities Commission, the agency that approved the expansion, to halt the plan.

Yiwen Lu is a technology reporting fellow based in San Francisco. More about Yiwen Lu

Driverless Cars and the Future of Transportation

China’s Advantage: Across China , more assisted driving systems and robot taxis are being tested than in any other country, with censors limiting discussions about safety.

A Very Slow Restart: An incident that seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco led Cruise, G.M.’s driverless car subsidiary, to take all of its cars off the road. The question now is when they will return .

An Appetite for Destruction: A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s Autopilot software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about Elon Musk, the company’s erratic chief executive ?

Along for the Ride: Here’s what New York Times reporters experienced during test rides in driverless cars operated by Tesla , Waymo  and Cruise .

The Future of Transportation?: Driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco . “The Daily” looked at the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves .

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Self-driving taxis blocked an ambulance and the patient died, San Francisco fire department says

By Andrew Paul

Posted on Sep 5, 2023 11:10 AM EDT

Two self-driving taxis blocked an ambulance on its way to a hospital, potentially contributing to the patient’s death, according to a San Francisco Fire Department report obtained by  Forbes . The incident involving two Cruise vehicles occurred on August 14, just four days after state regulators approved 24/7 public availability of autonomous cab services in the city.

[Related: “Cruise’s self-driving taxis are causing chaos in San Francisco.” ]

Emergency responders arrived around 10:45 PM at the scene of an accident involving a critically-wounded pedestrian, the report states . While there, however, the Cruise autonomous taxis occupied two lanes of a four-lane, one-way street, forcing a police vehicle in a separate lane to move to make space for the ambulance to leave. 

“The [patient] was packaged for transport with life threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” reads a portion of the official report . “This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor [patient] outcome… The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 is unacceptable.”

Cruise representatives dispute the SFFD report, instead claiming the fleet vehicles did not hamper medical treatment in any way. “The ambulance behind the [autonomous vehicle] had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do,” a Cruise spokesperson told PopSci . “As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded from doing so by the AV.” In footage provided to The NY Times , EMS maneuvered around a Cruise vehicle roughly 90 seconds after loading the victim into the ambulance.

Public documents obtained by Forbes detail over 70 instances since April 2022 of autonomous vehicles allegedly obstructing a variety of emergency responses—including fires, and restoring electrical services. Despite months of pushback from many residents and city officials, California regulators approved the public usage of autonomous taxi services like Cruise and Waymo in San Francisco last month. Within days of the greenlight, however, the autonomous vehicles reportedly ran stop signs, produced lengthy traffic jams, and recklessly swerved to avoid pedestrians.

Update 09/05/23 12:50 PM: This article has been updated to include a statement from Cruise.

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US reports claim Cruise robotaxis delayed ambulance at fatal accident

by Leigh Mc Gowran

Image: © Ryan/Stock.adobe.com

Reports from emergency responders claim the automated vehicles contributed to the ‘poor patient outcome’, though Cruise denies that its vehicles delayed the ambulance.

Reports from the San Francisco Fire Department claim Cruise taxis blocked an ambulance that was trying to reach a critically injured patient, who later died from their injuries.

Two reports obtained by Forbes claim the ambulance was attempting to reach a patient who had “significant left lower extremity injuries” after a car accident. One of the reports claims the “only open lanes” were blocked by two Cruise taxis that were not moving or leaving the scene.

“The pt [patient] was packaged for transport with life-threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” one report states. “This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor pt outcome.

“In any significant traumatic event, time is of the essence to transport the pt to definitive care in order to give them the best possible chance at survival.”

Both reports claim that the Cruise vehicles contributed to a delay in transporting the patient, which also contributed to the “poor patient outcome”. The individual was pronounced dead roughly 20 to 30 minutes after arriving at the San Francisco General Hospital.

“The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable,” one report said.

Cruise denied the claim that the ambulance was blocked due to its autonomous vehicles and shared a video with Forbes of the incident. Forbes said this video shows a free lane that vehicles moved through, though it is unclear if the larger ambulance would have been able to navigate through it as easily.

One of the reports claims the San Francisco Police Department attempted to manually take over the autonomous vehicles “but were unsuccessful”.

The incident comes less than a month after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) granted Alphabet-owned Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise the right to conduct commercial driverless taxi services “at any time of day” in San Francisco.

Before this change, Waymo and Cruise only had permission to offer limited services and were restricted to certain times of day and locations, as well as whether a safety driver was present in the car.

“While we do not yet have the data to judge AVs against the standard human drivers are setting, I do believe in the potential of this technology to increase safety on the roadway,” said CPUC commissioner John Reynolds at the time. Reynolds was also a former general counsel at Cruise.

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Related: autotech , General Motors , automation , transport , US

Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

[email protected]

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Authorities identify man who died after robotaxi allegedly blocked San Francisco ambulance

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A San Francisco man who appears to have been homeless has been identified as the person who died of their injuries after a Cruise robotaxi allegedly blocked an ambulance from transporting him to a hospital.

General Motors-backed Cruise strongly denies the San Francisco Fire Department’s claims that its vehicle blocked the ambulance from transporting Sammy Davis, 69, who had no fixed address, away from the emergency scene—a delay firefighters say contributed to the man’s death. The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Davis’ identity to The Standard on Thursday.

On Aug. 14, Davis was struck by a vehicle and suffered life-threatening injuries at Seventh and Harrison streets in the SoMa neighborhood. Davis later died of his injuries.

Public records indicate that Davis had lived in San Francisco and Oakland and was likely low-income. In 1996, the San Francisco Housing Authority went to court to evict him from a home in the Fillmore District.

“The patient was packaged for transport with life-threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” the San Francisco Fire Department report, first reported by Forbes , reads. “The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable.”

Cruise strongly disputes the fire department’s account of the incident, noting that 90 seconds elapsed between the patient being put on the stretcher and the ambulance leaving the scene.

“Throughout the entire duration the [autonomous vehicle] is stopped, traffic remains unblocked and flowing to the right of the AV,” a Cruise spokesperson said in a statement. “The ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do.”

Cruise did not respond to a request for an updated comment.

Cruise, Waymo 24/7 Operations Approved

Multiple autonomous vehicle companies are operating in San Francisco. It’s unclear which company boasts the best safety record, yet Cruise cars appear to have had more incidents involving injuries, according to publicly available reports from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Waymo and Cruise reported 103 and 68 collisions in San Francisco since Jan. 1, 2022, according to the latest records available from the DMV.

READ MORE:   Waymo Robotaxis Crashed More Than Cruise in San Francisco, but Cruise Had More Injuries

Both Cruise and Waymo cleared the last regulatory hurdle toward full driverless deployment at a California Public Utilities Commission  hearing  in August that allowed both companies to charge for 24/7 driverless rides throughout the city, despite heavy protest from  activists  and taxi  drivers . The state told Cruise to  cut  its fleet in half after a crash with a  fire truck injured a passenger .

This is a developing story.

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UPDATED 19:30 EDT / SEPTEMBER 03 2023

Patient dies after Cruise vehicles allegedly block ambulance in San Francisco

by Duncan Riley

Two autonomous vehicles belonging to Cruise LLC, a unit of General Motors Co., are alleged to have delayed an ambulance in San Francisco on Aug. 14, with the patient later dying in hospital.

The incident, which Cruise disputes, allegedly involved two Cruise autonomous vehicles that were stopped in two right-hand lanes on a four-lane, one-way street where the victim was found after an apparent collision by another car, according to a San Francisco Fire Department report reported  Saturday by the New York Times. It’s alleged that a police vehicle in another lane then had to be moved to allow the ambulance to leave.

The report claims that the driverless vehicles delayed transport and medical care, with the victim later pronounced dead 20 to 30 minutes after arriving at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

Cruise has denied the report, showing footage that one of the vehicles had left the scene before the victim was loaded into the ambulance and the other vehicle stopped in the right-hand lane until the ambulance left. Footage is also said to have shown other vehicles, including another ambulance, passing by the right-hand side of the remaining Cruise vehicle.

“As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded,” the spokesperson for Cruise told the Times. The footage also shows that the ambulance passed the Cruise vehicle 90 seconds after the patient was loaded. A police officer did speak to Cruise employees through remote assistance and the company navigated the vehicle away from the scene after the ambulance had left.

The incident occurred several days after Cruise and Waymo LLC were given authorization to offer paid autonomous taxi trips in San Francisco by the California Public Utilities Commission. Both companies had previously been trialing the service.

Whether the incident was actually an incident or not comes amid a growing backlash against autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, including activist groups placing traffic cones on autonomous vehicles to disable them. According to an NPR report in August , a group called “Safe Street Rebel” is behind the so-called “coning” campaign to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco’s streets to protest against the city being used as a testing ground for the technology.

The San Francisco Fire Department claims that there have been more than 70 cases of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency responders. Consequently, some city officials have protested against the expansion of autonomous vehicle services, saying that the number of incidents is much higher than claimed because companies are only required to report collisions to regulators, not other incidents.

Photo: Cruise

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Cruise pushes back against claims from the SF fire department

The autonomous vehicle company and the fire department have two conflicting narratives of what exactly happened on aug. 14, by gia vang • published september 1, 2023 • updated on september 1, 2023 at 11:34 pm.

The company Cruise is pushing back against an accusation from the San Francisco Fire Department, which claims that one of the company’s autonomous vehicles delayed an ambulance after a deadly accident. 

According to SF Fire, on Aug. 14, a driver hit a pedestrian in the city at around 11 p.m. The department said emergency medical service crews faced a problem getting to the collision: two Cruise taxis blocking the road. 

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That blockage, according to SF Fire, caused a delay in getting the pedestrian to the hospital, where they later died. 

Cruise car involved in San Francisco crash

Another Cruise robotaxi mishap in San Francisco caught on video

In a report, the department wrote of the incident: “This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor patient outcome…The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable.”

But Cruise is pushing back on that narrative of events. A spokesperson for the company said videos from those AVs show a different story. 

“The first vehicle promptly clears the area once the light turns green and the other stops in the lane to yield to first responders who are directing traffic,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Throughout the entire duration the AV is stopped, traffic remains unblocked and flowing to the right of the AV. The ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including the ambulance, proceeded to do so. As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded from doing so by the AV.”

Cruise wouldn't share that video, saying that it was proprietary material.

But NBC Bay Area was able to review a nearly 13 minute video which is purportedly the incident in question. It appears to show what the company describes, including the ambulance managing to squeeze by the stopped Cruise car. 

The incident happened just four days after the California Public Utilities Commission approved an expansion for Cruise, as well as the company Waymo, allowing both to operate AVs at all hours in San Francisco. 

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It’s a move Supervisor Aaron Peskin has been critical of. And while he couldn't speak to the events on Aug. 14 , Peskin did tell NBC Bay Area there are now more than 70 documented incidents of AVs interfering with first responders. 

“In those cases seconds and minutes can make a difference in whether somebody bleeds out or is able to be resuscitated from a heart attack or other emergency,” he said. “And it’s not a question of ‘if,” it’s a question of ‘when.’ “

Peskin is asking the state for more regulation over the emerging AV industry. He said the city is set to talk to legislators and DMV leadership later this month.

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Self-driving car blocking road ‘delayed patient care’, San Francisco officials say

Cruise, the robotaxi firm, denies the city’s claims its vehicle blocked ambulance which resulted in injured person’s death

San Francisco authorities and the company Cruise have offered conflicting accounts of an incident in which the fire department said two of the company’s robotaxis delayed an ambulance transporting a patient with critical injuries who later died at a hospital.

The company denied the city’s claims and shared video with the Guardian that shows one of the vehicles quickly leaving the area. Reports of the incident have garnered outrage in San Francisco, which has been battling over the use of robotaxis vehicles in the city.

Concerns over driverless taxis in the city have been growing for months amid reports that the vehicles have caused mayhem, blocking thoroughfares and getting in the way of first responders.

Protesters , including taxi drivers and city transit workers, gathered outside the Cruise headquarters on Monday and mentioned the situation involving the robotaxis and the ambulance multiple times .

In an incident on 14 August, first responders were treating a pedestrian who had been struck by a vehicle and had life-threatening injuries with significant bleeding. Two autonomous Cruise vehicles had stopped in nearby lanes and were not moving, “blocking ingress and egress”, according to a San Francisco fire department report obtained by Forbes.

As the emergency crews loaded the patient into an ambulance, the vehicles remained stopped in the two lanes and police attempts to takeover the vehicles manually were unsuccessful, the report states. The fire department had to locate a police officer on scene and ask him to move to his vehicle in order to leave the scene, which the report states “further delayed patient care”.

“This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor [patient] outcome,” an unidentified first responder wrote in the report. “In any significant traumatic event, time is of the essence to transport the [patient] to definitive care in order to give them the best possible chance at survival.”

Cruise disputes the fire department’s claims and offers a different account of what happened. The vehicles encountered the emergency scene, the company said in a statement, and one left the area when a stoplight turned green while the other stopped “to yield to first responders” who were directing traffic. During the entire period the vehicle was stopped, traffic was “unblocked and flowing” to the right of the robotaxi.

“The ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do. As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded from doing so by the AV,” a spokesperson, Tiffany Testo, said in a statement.

Video of the incident provided by Cruise and viewed by the Guardian shows three Cruise vehicles, along with other cars, near the scene as first responders are arriving. Two autonomous vehicles leave the area – one continues up the street, away from first responders, where it briefly pauses before continuing on.

A stalled Cruise vehicle remained on scene with cars – including an ambulance –passing in the lane to the right of the vehicle. The ambulance assisting the victim did not pass to the right of the vehicle and instead drove on its left side.

The patient died 20 to 30 minutes after reaching the hospital, according to the fire department’s report.

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Testo noted that the patient’s death was caused by a human driver, and pointed to the company’s safety record.

“During the course of more than 3 million miles of fully autonomous driving in San Francisco we’ve seen an enormous number of emergency vehicles – more than 168,000 interactions just in the first seven months of this year alone,” she said in a statement. “Our technology is always improving, and we maintain an open line of communication with first responders to receive feedback and discuss specific incidents to improve our response.”

Last month, California regulators had allowed Cruise and the Google spinoff Waymo to expand and operate robotaxis throughout San Francisco at all hours. The companies had previously been operating a small fleet of vehicles without drivers during off-peak hours.

Just a week later, Cruise agreed to cut its robotaxi fleet in the city in half as authorities investigate two crashes.

Waymo and Cruise have disputed some accounts of the vehicles causing problems and argued the technology is safe and beneficial.

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Fire department blames Cruise car for blocking ambulance

The San Francisco Fire Department claims that a driverless vehicle impeded first responders' efforts to save a person's life.

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Emergency crews block road after elderly woman knocked down by car

Pictures show multiple police and ambulance vehicles on the scene on Gorton Road

• 12:56, 8 JUL 2024

An elderly woman has been taken to hospital after being knocked down by a car in Stockport .

Police and paramedics raced to the scene of the incident on Gorton Road in Reddish , close to the junction with Melbourne Street, this afternoon (Monday). A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police said officers responded to reports of a collision between a car and a pedestrian - a woman aged in her 70s.

The woman has been taken to hospital from the scene. Her injuries are not believed to be serious, the GMP spokesperson added.

READ NEXT: Victim knocked out in brutal attack at pub after England match

No arrests have been made and the driver of the car involved remained on the scene. Pictures showed at least three police vehicles and two ambulance vehicles on the scene on Gorton Road earlier.

The emergency crews blocked a stretch of the busy road road close to the Reddish Library. The road has not been fully closed off, but traffic is currently being diverted around the incident.

Read more of today's top stories here

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Beryl maps show path and landfall forecast of storm that's a hurricane again

By Cara Tabachnick , Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: July 8, 2024 / 8:32 AM EDT / CBS News

After hitting Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Beryl  regained hurricane strength as it churned across the Gulf of Mexico before it made landfall as a Category 1 over the middle Texas Gulf Coast early Monday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The storm blew past the Cayman Islands and Jamaica last week, initially making landfall over the island of Carriacou in Grenada while tearing through the Caribbean , strengthening at times to a Category 5 hurricane — the  strongest rating .

What is Beryl's projected path?

The Miami-based hurricane center issued an update early Monday saying Beryl was "moving inland over eastern Texas," bringing "life-threatening storm surge and heavy rainfall," along with damaging winds along the coast "with strong winds moving inland."

As of 8 a.m. EDT, a hurricane warning is in effect for the Texas coast from Mesquite Bay north to Port Bolivar, and a tropical storm warning from Port Bolivar to Sabine Pass.

The hurricane center said hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 45 miles from Beryl's core and tropical-storm-force winds extended outward up to 115 miles.

Beryl's eye " will move  over eastern Texas today, then move through the Lower Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday," the hurricane center said. " ... Steady to rapid weakening is expected as the center moves inland, and Beryl is expected to weaken to a tropical storm later today and to a tropical depression on Tuesday."

A storm surge warning is in effect for the area from Mesquite Bay to Sabine Pass, including Matagorda Bay and Galveston Bay. Texas coastal areas could see storm surges of 4-7 feet, the hurricane center forecast.

"Heavy rainfall of 5 to 10 inches with localized amounts of 15 inches is expected across portions of the middle and upper Texas Gulf Coast and eastern Texas today into tonight," the hurricane center said. "Considerable flash and urban flooding as well as minor to isolated major river flooding is expected."

Beryl had made landfall in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula Friday as a Category 2 hurricane, just northeast of the resort town of Tulum, before weakening to a tropical storm.

Beryl became the  first hurricane  of the 2024  Atlantic hurricane season  on Saturday and rapidly strengthened. It first reached Category 4 on Sunday, wavering back to Category 3 before returning to Category 4 on Monday and then becoming a Category 5 later Monday night. It is the first major hurricane east of the Lesser Antilles on record for June, according to Philip Klotzbach, Colorado State University hurricane researcher.

Brian McNoldy, a tropical meteorology researcher for the University of Miami, told the AP that warm waters fueled Beryl, with ocean heat content in the deep Atlantic the highest on record for this time of year.

Beryl has also set records  as the first June hurricane ever to hit Category 4, the farthest east a storm has ever hit Category 4, and the first storm before September to go from tropical depression to major hurricane in under 48 hours, CBS News weather producer David Parkinson reported.

Beryl was also the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin and was only the second Category 5 storm recorded in July since 2005, according to the hurricane center.

Brian Dakss, Alex Sundby and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cara Tabachnick is a news editor at CBSNews.com. Cara began her career on the crime beat at Newsday. She has written for Marie Claire, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She reports on justice and human rights issues. Contact her at [email protected]

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